Faolan's Pen

“Start at the beginning, continue until the end.”

It seems like really simple advice.  Start writing at the beginning.  Finish writing at the end.

A lot of novels disregard this with  in media res beginnings,  anachronic order, flashbacks and flash-forwards.  Like all rules, it can be broken, but today, I’m going to talk about the ‘simple’ stories. These ones start at the beginning and continue until the end with maybe an occasional flashback or six.

This leaves us with a question that seems like the answer should be obvious: where is the beginning?

Does your Hero’s Journey start when the Hero leaves the farm?  Or does it start when he reaches the big city?  Or at his first memories and show us his entire life (Belgariad, I am looking at you)?

The answer it that it depends.

I’m thinking on beginnings because I’m working out the start to a new story in my head.  In it, the main character is an exiled nobleman.  I could start the story in two places, both of which could easily be judged as ‘the beginning.’  Firstly, I could start it when he is exiled – the attack on his House, his flight and subsequent escape.  Or I could start when he reaches his place of exile, where he confounds his pursuers and gains himself breathing space to make new plans.

The latter shows my character, intended to be a competent and charming confidence man, in a light that is more consistent with his portrayal.  Either way, he will have to explain why he fled to others, which allows me to explain his flight without ever needing to show it on the page.

It’s not the beginning of the events the story is about – but it is the beginning of the story.

And from there, we continue until the end.

It smelled of smoke.  Everywhere in the airship, from the flame room at the top of the hull where the Keeper’s bound spirit sustained the fires that raised and propelled the vessel to the glass-floored luxury lounge at the bottom of the hull where the high class passengers gambled and lied, smelled of smoke.

I’ll leave you with that.  Its a reminder that I need to write.

Glynn Stewart

In the immortal words of Granny Weatherwax: I aten’t dead yet.

This blog is always going to be quiet in January due to my day job, but this January also had the extra layers of sorting out wedding planning and going to see a local production of Spamalot (awesome show, and Front Row Center Players did an amazing job of it).

I also finished the academic portion of my professional designation, which brings us to today’s topic:  Time Management and doing what you love.

One of my colleagues was accused of being unable to get his designation (a post-graduate qualification in accounting) due to playing too many video games.  I have a similar level of video game playtime to this co-worker. Since I just completed my own designation, this had me thinking about how I balanced the two.

The same skill factors into writing, or any time consuming project you’ve taken on at home that tends to be put aside in favor of something ‘fun.’

The one thing that I strongly suggest you do not do is resolve to delay your fun thing until it’s ‘all done,’  especially if it’s a larger project.  In fact, I suggest that you start with your fun thing – and set a timer.

By starting with fun, you relax yourself, and you prove to your crankier sub-conscious self that your project is not a punishment.  By setting a timer, you know that you will stop your fun and get to your ‘real’ project at a time that lets you get everything done.

To follow up on this, split your project into smaller pieces.  Don’t try and write a novel in one sitting – split it into chapters and scenes, and reward yourself for finishing these pieces.  Write a scene, answer a long-answer question, review a chapter’s worth of notes – and then go have a bit more fun.

I found that a half hour timer on video games works quite well. Half an hour is enough to wrap up a mission or level in most video games, and it’s a small interruption to your flow on your big project.

All of this, of course, has exceptions.  If you’re in the zone and flowing on your big project, don’t make yourself stop – the project itself is fun at that moment!

The other exception?  Don’t try the timer with Civilization.  It just doesn’t work…

Namaste all,

Glynn Stewart

Five days ago I wrote the last exam for my professional certification.  While this is hugely meaningful to me, its main relevance to the Pen is that I now have the time to get back to writing.

Doing so is not as easy as one would wish.  It’s been months since I’ve written regularly, so I’ve been looking at various motivation methods and drivers.

NaNoWriMo is a good example: all around the world, people start with the goal of a 50,000 word month and go.  My last completed novel started as a NaNoWriMo project.  Sadly, unless you’re a professional writer (in which case, 50k is probably a slow month), this is a level of commitment and push that most of us can’t put out every month.

At the smaller end of the scale is C. E. Murphy’s  #1k1hr: simply put, lock yourself in your office for an hour and write, with the goal of having a thousand words at the end of it.  This is something that most of us can readily do if we choose to, especially those of us without children.

I’ve always been a fan of the standard of “Write something every day.  Doesn’t matter how much, write something.”

To get back into that habit, I plan to leverage 1k1hrs and a NaNoWriMo style monthly goal.  Starting this December, I aim to push out 20,000 words a month.  Blog posts, RPG notes, etc, don’t count – only words churned through on an actual novel count.

Working towards that goal, I’ll be doing 1k1hr shortly.

Wish me luck folks!

Glynn Stewart

Marshall Maresca, another of the Mighty Agent‘s clients, explains here why he isn’t doing NaNoWriMo this year.  His methodology for story creation is notably different than mine—and that renders NaNoWriMo less useful for him.

Two years back, it was NaNoWriMo that got me going on an idea that had been floating around my head for a while.  I have a lot of story ideas running around my head at any given moment (I can list five—no, six—relatively quickly.  Three story ideas are in universes where I’ve finished novels; three are completely new worlds).

I world-build as I write, trying to remember to take notes as I go so I can pick things back up later. The “pick things up back later” has proven important for me, because Life (which is a four letter word) tends to interfere with any neat writing schedule I set up—I’m in the final stages of professional certification, so sadly writing has to take a back seat to that.

Often, novels that I really DO plan on finishing are left to get dusty. Right now, I have a Changeling sequel and an ONSET sequel and prequel all hovering in the 15,000 to 30,000 word range.  I intend to finish all three of those books by the end of next year.

But to pick up where I left off is impossible.  I can’t just open the word file, hit Ctrl+End and start writing (OK, I could probably do that on the ONSET prequel, but I was working on it most recently).

I need to get back in the space of the world—setting notes help and I have them, but a lot of my world is made up as I go and needs to stay consistent with things I may not have mentioned in my notes.

The biggest sticker is getting back into the characters’ heads.  My portrayals have to be consistent.  Writing Changeling, I need to turn the snark factor a bit higher.  Writing ONSET, it needs to be turned off for the main character (but his friends and subordinates need to layer it in).

I find the solution to getting my head wrapped back around my world and characters is simple.  I start at the beginning of the first book and read forward.  To pick up from the current “end point,” I start at the very beginning and read forward.

This is not as time consuming as it may sound as I am a fast reader, but I suspect the process will put a hard cap on how long any series of mine will ever be.  I think that no matter how good I get at notes, this will still be my default.  Every book I write in a given series will be re-read while writing the latest book.  I expect to re-read Changeling’s Fealty at least six times while writing Changeling’s Duty.

It works for me, but it may not work for others.  I’m interested in other methods too.  What works for you?

Lastly, NaNoWriMo is poorly timed for me this year, so I won’t be participating.

Glynn Stewart

P.S. I’m blaming agently poking for this one.

My last story involving the US Government—ONSET—was based around a SWAT-style team who showed up after due process was written off.  This story is about the front-line supernatural cops in the same setting.  The conceit of the story is that every US Government branch has an ‘Omicron Office’ to give supernaturals the same legal process as mundanes.  So now, of course, I have to know what said processes are.

One of the reasons I like the internet: I google “United States procedure for issuing arrest warrant” and get a lawyer’s summary of the process in the first three hits.

Another tweak? I need names for crimes that don’t exist in the real world: Thaumaturgical Murder, for example, being pretty obvious.

But what do you call the pre-meditated influence of someone’s mind with magic?

Twitter and Facebook gave me a bunch of suggestions that I’m still mulling over. “Psyche Invasion” will work as a placeholder, and I’m still considering “Thaumaturgical Influence.” I do want to avoid using ‘Thaumaturgical’ in the description of every supernatural crime.  At the same time, I can see the US Legal System using a consistent naming scheme for supernatural crimes.

“We’re talking life and death here.  Life for Psyche Invasion in the First Degree, and the chair for Thaumaturgical Murder.”

Glynn Stewart

Given the tagline of this website, an alternative to dual-wielding seems appropriate: Arsenal Firearms has created the first double-barreled .45 pistol.

I’m not sure I’d want to fire the thing, but I have a few characters who could. It is a more practical weapon that I originally envisaged one group of characters carrying—let’s just leave it at “Metalstorm Pistol”.

Secondly, there’s been an idea sweeping the blogs of the authors I follow. A manifesto, the originator of the idea calls it. Sarah Hoyt’s “Human Wave Science Fiction” brings up the point that we, as writers, should be not be restricting ourselves to what has been done and what others say we can do. Most especially, us science fiction and fantasy authors shouldn’t restrict ourselves!

One of my agent’s other clients, Marshall Maresca, explicitly included fantasy in the grouping and I agree completely. While in some ways, I disagree with the way we tend to lump fantasy and science fiction together as a single genre, in this case they share a core purpose.

The purpose of science fiction and fantasy, of this human wave Sarah is trying to instigate, is to entertain. To uplift. To step outside the box—to throw the box away and pretend we never saw it—and communicate with everyone we can reach. And through escapism and positive stories, make them feel better about the world.

In the end, the price should be high, the damage great. But the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and the world improves. And when you’re done writing, you’ve done something to make your reader’s day brighter. In so doing so, you’ve improved the world.

Besides, in a world where we all think in the box, who’s going to build double-barreled automatic pistols?

Glynn Stewart

So, with another year finished (though I’ll admit to not remembering exactly what day I started this blog) I’m spending a bit of time considering on writing and this blog.

Over christmas I was moderately successful with my ‘add horror’ project with ONSET, which I’m hoping to finish by the end of January.  Sadly, reworking the first book like this has led me to the conclusion that I actually dislike my long term plan for the series, so I will be sketching an entirely new, probably much shorter, arc for the ONSET books.  I think at least part of my currently started sequel is salvagable, but I know I’m throwing out most of the intended plot.

I am assured by the lovely young lady acting as my cover artist / PR guru that there will be a cover for Children of the Twain by the end of the month or so.  If that is the case and the ONSET re-write is finished, I will put aside several weeks to go over Children of the Twain again and see if there is any more polishing or tweaking needed.  It will likely be self e-book published (hence PR guru.  I’m an accountant and a writer, not a marketing person) in March.

(The remainder of my books, including the rewritten ONSET and the Changeling sequel sitting in the back of my head complaining about these rewrites of school, will remain with my agent in the hopes of more traditional publishing success)

Flowing from that is that there will likely be some minor and medium changes around here, as we re-consider the purpose of this blog and start ramping it up a bit with the expectation of an available book in the near future.  In the interests of polishing up the right parts, I’m opening the floor to the peanut gallery.  What interests you that you’ve seen here you’d like to see more of?  What do you think I should start doing?

All thoughts and commentary are welcome!

Glynn Stewart

To make up for some of my lapses in posting, here’s an excerpt from my ‘adding horror’ project on ONSET:

“This video clip is from late oh seven,” he told them.  “It is camera footage from the commander’s Leopard Tank of Delta Company, Armored Battalion Thirteen of the Swiss Panzerbridge Eleven.  They were carrying out training exercises in the Alps, when, well… watch.”

The teacher hit a button, and the video clip started. 

For a moment, all that the gun camera showed was frozen mountainside, and then the camera rotated, the commander reviewing the sixteen tanks as they crunched their way over the frozen field.  The video was completely silent, so it was a complete shock when the tank on the end of the even line suddenly erupted into the air.

The sixty-plus ton vehicle flipped completely end over end, slamming turret first into the ground almost a hundred meters from its launch point with a visible crumpling.

Standing under where the tank had been driving was a monstrosity out of nightmare.  Six or more meters tall, the creature looked like a moss covered stone figure of a man – carved by rough description.  Its rough mouth was open in a silent scream as it charged at the next tank in line.

There was no way the tank driver could have reacted, and the troll ripped the mighty armored vehicle in half with one yank of its immense arms.  The professionalism of the Swiss army was demonstrated, however, in that the first shots hit the monster as it was attacking the second vehicle.

The camera was bouncing and wavering insanely as the tank started backpedalling, the formation rotating as the vehicles tried to open the distance and open fire on the creature.  The first few rounds did nothing, exploding on the troll’s stone skin and stripping off moss.

The second salvo of rounds, however, showed that the Swiss had learned the first salvo’s lessons.  The bright ‘silver arrow’ of discarding sabot anti-tank rounds lit up the cameras view as dozens of machine guns chattered to life as well.

The troll felt the armor piercing rounds, raising its head in a bellow, silent on the film, which shook the trees around it.  Whatever it felt wasn’t enough to kill it, however, and it charged the line of tanks with a speed that left the camera only recording a blur.

David had to shake his head to clear dizziness as the camera spun to catch the troll slamming into two of the tanks simultaneously with the force of a train engine.  Its broad arms crashed clean through the front armor, but got stuck.  For a moment, the troll stood still, a fist buried in each tank.

Shaking its head in confusion, a second salvo of armor piercing rounds slammed into it.  This time, the commander’s tank was close enough to clearly see the rounds punching through the stone of the creatures flesh.  Some kind of black ooze dripped from the wounds, and the creature spun around to face the other tanks.  One of its hands tore free from the tank it had struck.

The other brought the sixty ton tank around with it, only breaking free in time to send it hurtling directly at the camera.

The film stopped there, and faded to a still shot of the same field.  The smoldering wreckage of seven of the company’s sixteen tanks littered it, and the photographer had caught six of the remaining tanks, in a carefully aligned circle, training their main guns on the broken stone pieces of the creature.

“That,” Koburn said quietly, “was a Greater Troll.  So far as we can tell, in eras of lower magical activity, they go to sleep like Dragons.  They wake up more readily than dragons, however, and nine have awoken in the European mountains in the last decade.  It is only a matter of time until one wakes up in the Rockies, and they are, as you saw, incredibly hard to kill.

“Worse,” he continued grimly, “is their shared attribute with the type of Empowered we also call a troll.  Both must eat human flesh to survive – nothing else provides nutrition.  Evidence suggests that a Greater Troll requires a lot of human flesh – we have not always been so lucky as to have a tank company literally drive over the troll.”

So, to my great surprise, I actually have two weeks away from work for Christmas.

For those wondering what happened to this blog, ‘work’ is the only answer I can give, so this break lets me get going on a few things I’ve been thinking on.

Firstly, the project thats up in my re-write of ONSET: To Serve and Protect.  There’s a few agendas going on in this re-write, one of them is adding more of a horror aspect to many parts of the story (which involves taking a degree of agency away from my main character.  But, let’s be honest, David White has a giant stick up his rectum, agency is bad for him!).  So far so good, the biggest issue is going to be that this will probably kick the novel to around 125,000 words based on the current expansion.  Which means I’ll have to go back after the re-write and cut it down.

Seeing as how I’m barely six chapters in to a 47 chapter novel and I promised an Evil Agent that this would be done in October… I have some catching up to do!

Secondly, I really need to get going again on the Changeling sequel.  The next scene involves a gay werewolf gun dealer, so I have no idea why its taken me so long to get to writing it!  I enjoy the new writing more than the edit/re-write process, so I may end up using this as part of my motivation for the re-write – “edit ten chapters and you can write another scene with a gay werewolf gun dealer.”

My third project is for my actual real school.  And the fourth is to somehow manage to destress and recharge.

Holidays are awesome.  Mine look rather busy with writing.  It’s time to do some catching up.

Glynn

So my last couple of weeks has been devoured by video games, distracting me from many productive things I should be doing (writing, editing, accounting projects I actually get paid for once I’ve finished, that kind of thing).

The primary culprit of this distraction is Square Enix’s prequel to Deus Ex.  The original game, while flawed, was an epic foray into the mix of FPS and RPG elements with a intricate cyberpunk conspiracy story that was thoroughly engaging.

The original sequel, while fun and a decent shooter in its own right… paled in comparison to the original.  So the  Deus Ex franchise was dead until this summer.

And it was revived with a vengeance.  In DX:HR we meet Adam Jensen, the ex-SWAT security chief of a major biotech company.  Of course, like everything else that comes along over the course of the story, we learn that Adam is more than he appears to be – more than even he knows!

The story of Deus Ex: Human Revolution grabbed me early on, and held me spellbound for over 30 hours of focused play.  The gameplay lived up to the story, with multiple options for dealing with everything.  At one point, you can enter a damaged base via a broken maintenance tunnel, half flooded and full of electrified water.  It’s quite doable, but if you have upgraded Adam the right way, you can make several cybernetic leg powered leaps up some storage containers, and sneak in through an industrial air vent on the roof.  This kind of multiple option path is normal for the game.

If you’re interested in computer role playing games OR first person shooters, I highly recommend picking up Human Revolution.  I personally give it a 9.5/10 (I have some issues with a few design decisions made in how some aspects of your character’s abilities work).

And with the game done, I have super-seekrit-project 92 to work on this weekend.  The edit for the potential e-book version of Children of the Twain is done.  A second edit will be done once I have a cover for the e-book (which is currently under construction in more capable hands than mine for that).

I will also be packing and working on internal audit homework.  A not secret project is to have all of my IA assignments due before mid-October done by mid-September, so I’m not panicking about them during my move at the end of September.

Namaste all,

Glynn Stewart